


and a happy new year.

by Kaatiba



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boys In Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21751909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaatiba/pseuds/Kaatiba
Summary: A softer take on Boris comforting Theo after his dad hits him.
Relationships: Theodore Decker & Boris Pavlikovsky, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 3
Kudos: 77





	and a happy new year.

Theo stumbles into the blinding desert sun, his dust covered khakis unable to hide the shaking of his legs. He’d taken a bambi-like step off the front stoop and immediately tripped over his own feet, knees meeting the hot pavement abruptly. 

His glasses had fallen off with the force, and he picked them up, feeling the left temple swing, disconnected from the lenses and hanging on by a thread, much like Theo himself in that moment.

He numbly watches as small vertical drops of blood begins to pile at the edges of his scraped palm. Unsurprisingly, there is dust on them too now. It reminds him of the soot and ashes of the gallery. The blood reminds him of the pieces on the floor. The stinging in his cheek reminds him of the only parent he has left.

_ He has to get out of here _ . Just like in the gallery, he begins to stumble forward blindly, although this time there aren't any inconvenient body parts lying around, just pavement and potholes, and the relentless Nevada sky.

He starts running as fast as his Converse will take him. Everything looks the same, all the cookie cutter deserted houses being reclaimed by the earth, but he has a singular destination.

The mean sun is starting to give authority to the punishingly cold night as he skids to a stop in front of Boris’ ugly beige house. 

He knocks on the door, resisting the urge to bang in case Mr. Pavlikovsky is home. Luckily it’s a shadowy, thin face and dark eyes that greet him. 

“Potter?” He yawns, hands bunched in his red sweater, “Where are glasses?”

Wordlessly, Theo steps inside. Boris lets him and examines him in the foyer lighting. He frowns. “Who hit you?” He reaches his hand up as if to touch Theo’s cheek then aborts the motion. He straightens, “Time to kick their ass, no?”

Theo just looks at the slightly blurred shape of Boris’s head, broken glasses resting in his back pocket. Boris is obviously going to wait for an answer. He sighs, pulls them out, tries to put them on, just to feel them land crookedly across his lower cheek. 

“My dad.” 

He can’t quite make out Boris’s expression, but he feels the surprise, and maybe he’s being too presumptuous, but the anger on his behalf. He tries again with the glasses before Boris grabs his lower arm, lifts the sleeve up and looks for something. Satisfied, he uses it to steer Theo to the barren kitchen island. 

Theo listens to him curse in Russian and dig around a few drawers before pulling out some tape. He then lifts the broken glasses off Theo’s face with a semblance of gentleness before roughly taping them back together. 

He places them back on Theo’s face delicately and watches Theo blink. He’s standing close and doesn’t move. “Good?” Theo blushes and nods, poking the wad of tap now sticking up in his periphery while Boris continues to watch him. 

Boris looks sad. “I guess all fathers are same in end. Christmas dinner and pills at day, but at night..”

Theo knows he’s the pitiable figure right now, but he wants to comfort Boris. Tell him he doesn’t deserve to be his father’s son. Maybe tell him it was all a misunderstanding, Boris can continue idolizing his own dad. But he just says, “He needed money. To settle his debts to Silverman. Made me call my..my mom’s lawyer and ask for money from my trust, but..it didn’t work.”

Theo doesn’t know what happened after the call ended and his dad started howling like a wounded animal. He’d just run. Unbidden, he remembers something. “Popper!” He exclaims, turning to the door as if to run all the way back to his house.

Boris shakes his head, “Popchyk will be fine. He is much tougher than you anyway, Potter.”

Theo feels unbearably heavy all of a sudden, all the adrenaline leaving his body like a giant exhale that began the moment Boris opened the door to him.

“Sit,” Boris tells him, so he does. Right in the middle of the kitchen floor, he pulls his head to his knees and just breathes. The cool tile is nice. 

A few minutes later, Boris walks over and nudges him with a socked foot before plopping down next to him with a fresh bottle of vodka. “My father is going to be gone for a week or more,” he explains, passing it to Theo, “Merry Christmas.”

Theo cracks it open and takes a burning swig, “And a happy new year.”

They sit like that, listening to the radiator hum, drinking Stoli, mumbling passing thoughts until the green numbers on the microwave tell them it’s 2 AM, at which point Boris rouses a far tipsier Theo upstairs to bed with him. 

Theo immediately sags into the less familiar bed, that still smells like Boris: more vodka and cigarettes and cheap soap. He feels Boris remove his twisted glasses for him. He would’ve forgotten to do so. 

He must be drunker than he thought because his brain isn’t making any sense. He wants to do something stupid, indulge the words foaming at the tip of his tongue. The words that burn his throat like Stolichnaya but settle warm in his gut when he thinks them.

But he thinks, as he feels bony fingers tugging off his shoes for him, that Boris already knows.

He thinks, as a ragged cover is pulled over his shoulders, that he is not alone. 

  
  



End file.
